Wireless repeaters can be used to increase the range between devices communicating wirelessly. They may be of benefit in situations where a source and receiver are positioned out of wireless range of one another; the wireless repeater acting as an intermediate ‘hop’ in the transmission path from source to receiver thereby allowing devices to be separated by a greater distance than normally possible.
In some scenarios a single wireless repeater can be insufficient to maintain communication between a wireless source and monitoring station because the distance, even with a wireless repeater, may be too great. In other situations the characteristics of the operating environment may greatly attenuate the wireless data signal and so communication may be further impaired. Metal lined partitions and metallic foil lined insulation in buildings can severely impact wireless transmission for example.
A particular problem exists for communications with renewable energy monitoring systems using solar photovoltaic (PV) power inverters because they are typically located on the roof of a property. The PV power inverter may need to communicate with a gateway, which may be a wireless base station connected to a residential gateway (ADSL or cable modem for example) located, typically, on the ground floor of a building. In such situations wireless transmission is required through a roof and potentially several floors of the property.
One solution is to use multiple repeaters (multi-hop transmission), but this increases the cost and can also be unsightly and inconvenient to the consumer having to install multiple repeaters in the property.
There is therefore a need for an improved wireless repeater avoiding the cost and inconvenience of installing multiple repeaters in a property.
Background prior art can be found in EP2169847 A2, US2005/0201397 A1, US2002/0080027 A1, WO2005/119609 A2, EP1748576 A2, US2009/0160395 A1, CN 101674032 A.